I dished out five bucks for the new XBLA title Golden Axe, a port of an old-school classic. I immediatly jumped in on a co-op Xbox Live match. The game ran fairly smooth on live and there was few lag incidents, overall, I did not feel like it ruined the online play. My partner and I managed to beat the game in well under 30 minutes. What else is there to do after that you may ask? Well Golden Axe definetly does not provide a huge arsenal of items or magic, infact there are three weapons you can use in the game (standard one that comes with every hero) and aside from unlocking a couple of achievements (play with all three characters and do their highest magic) there really is not much else to do. Its always fun to try to beat the game without pressing continue to unlock the most elusive achievement but that is about it as far as replay value.

That Amazon needs to turn around…

The graphics are pixelated and are definetly nothing special, but I was not expecting an old school arcade port to be. The gameplay itself is purely hack and slash. You go around multiple levels slashing your way with three classes: The Amazon, The Barbarian, and a Dwarf. The only thing that changes in between classes is the magic ability, the Dwarf has the weakest magic while the Amazon has the best. Also, amusingly enough the Dwarf seemed to be a bit harder to hit to the enemies. Enemies are sometimes tough but again, its an arcade game so if you die, simply press start and get an extra five lives to do as you please. Of course if you are an achievement junkie, you will need to complete the game with just five lives. Surpirsingly enough, I found my 30 minute gaming experience with Golden Axe rather fun. As a matter of fact, I ran through it a second time to pick up some achievements I was missing. The added leaderboards and two player Co-Op mode certainly add a bit of replay value to the game but in the end you will find yourself playing the game two or three times, getting all the achievements if your into them, and then simply putting the game down. I must admit, it was fun while it lasted though